Classic Cruising

Collectible-car fever is catching on across the country—from Detroit's Woodward Dream Cruise to California's Concours d'Elegance—with action for buyers, sellers, drivers and gawkers

Paul A. Eisenstein
From the Print Edition:
Michael Jordan, July/August 2005

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GO WITH YOUR EMOTIONS
Rich Bellamo has put at least $21,000 into the '36 Dodge Coupe he christened Whammer Jammer in flaring script along its bustle-back trunk. And he admits he's not done working on it. For Bellamo, it's still like the old days; there's always a faster car to beat. Back in 1956, he would clock as many as 363 miles a night running up and down the Woodward Avenue circuit. "One morning, my mother asked me where I'd gone, and I told her I went out for pizza. But she had looked at the odometer. 'Where'd you get it,' she asked, 'Chicago?'"

Like Bellamo, most of the Dream Cruisers come from Detroit, but others have flown in from as far away as Germany, Guam, even Australia. It's a bit ironic that cruising and the cars of that era have come to be so celebrated, Jim Wangers says with a laugh. He was there when it all began. As the marketing genius behind the original GTO, or "Goat," and other legendary GM muscle cars, Wangers spent a lot of his off-hours racing up and down Woodward Avenue, listening to what the kids had to say and observing what they rode and raced.

This year's Dream Cruise comes as U.S. gasoline prices are soaring to record levels. The twin oil shocks of the 1970s, which quadrupled fuel prices and created long lines at the pump, helped put the brakes on the original cruising phenomenon. It just wasn't the same racing Woodward in a Volkswagen Beetle. But cruising was already an endangered activity. With the Vietnam War raging and the protest movement in full swing, suburban America had come to fear its children, and a special state police task force was formed in Michigan to crack down on drag racing and hot rodding. It was the same story all over the country. Just being young and having long hair was enough to get you a ticket, recalls Wangers. "It's ironic that the very thing they were so critical of then, they're eulogizing now."

You might say the same thing about the automobile itself, which is increasingly regulated, taxed and often reviled. Yet events such as the Dream Cruise, Pebble Beach's Concours and Arizona's Barrett-Jackson Auction reveal something very different: America's love of the automobile hasn't diminished—regardless if the car you've set your heart on is a '32 Packard or a '79 Sting Ray.

Paul A. Eisenstein publishes an automobile magazine on the Internet at www.TheCarConnection.com.

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